Christmas: Who should celebrate it?

Emmanuel Ukudolo I Monday, Dec. 25, 2023

 

LAGOS, Nigeria – The skies were literally lit with firecrackers of various colours last night when the clock rang the beautiful melody heralding the dawn of a new day, December 25, which is marked every year globally as Christmas.

It comes with holidays and merriment. For some, it is the day to put on the best of attires, for others it is a day to dine and possibly drink to stupor.

Most people who claim to be Christians do not miss this opportunity to jump on to the band-wagon without a hint of how it all began and what exactly the celebration is all about.

However, true followers of Jesus Christ do not celebrate Christmas because Jesus did not celebrate it neither did he command Christians or his disciples to so. The only celebration he commanded his followers to observe is found at Luke 22:19 & 20.

The argument is that if Christmas is very important, Jesus Christ, the foundation of Christianity would have celebrated it at least once in his 33 and half years of existence on earth but he never did. His disciples did not at any point celebrate it.

Besides, historical evidence show that Jesus Christ was not even born in December not to mention December 25. Of course December 25 is mentioned in the Bible at Jeremiah 52:31 but it had nothing to do with Christmas.

For the sake of emphasis, that place reads: “Now it came to pass in the 37 year of the captivity of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth day of the month, that Evil-Merodac king of Babylon in the first year of his reign lifted up the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah and brought him out of prison”. Holy Bible, New King James Version.

In fact, the Holy Scriptures made it clear that shepherds were in the field when Jesus Christ was born, which cannot be December. Recall that Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem Ephrathah. In fact, December is rainy and very cold and sometimes snowy in Bethlehem.

Besides, it is unthinkable for the Roman emperor to order his subjects to travel home for days in the dead of winter to register(census).

How then did we come about December 25th as Christmas. Well, December 25 was chosen by pagans to celebrate the sun god. “Birth of the new sun”. So when many of the pagans felt they had become believers, they decided to adopt the date to celebrate Jesus as against forgetting about festivities associated with the pagan celebration completely. So, it was a pagan festival that was brought into Christianity by the Roman empire.

Like many Christians, the Israelites did the same thing when they adopted a pagan festival and fine-tuned it or labelled it a festival to God, but they were punished by God. Read Exodus 32:4-10: Here the Israelites adopted an Egyptian religious practice and gave it a new name “a festival to Jehovah”. The fact that Christmas had pagan origin makes it detestable or untouchable for all true Christians, read Ephesians 5:10 &11.

First Published in 2019